Trust me, go. Don't fret about lost years, that's an illusion. Everyone has periods in their lives when the road ahead takes a hairpin bend; it's not a mistake, it's part of moving ahead. You've learned something. Now move on.
No, as it has not been tested it has not yet gained the status of "theory". At best it is an hypothesis, although that is probably not applicable if there is not a way of testing it.
Actually, l33t would in certain circumstances be a better move if you are playing a defensive game - it's much harder for someone else to make another word connecting to it as there are no other words currently that include a 3.
This quote made me smile. I run a raiding guid, not super hardcore but we're on heroic 25-man content.
And what I like about it is it is just like work SHOULD be. I get to organize stuff for 50 people, motivate them, keep them happy while maintaining discipline, work with the team to achieve things... all the stuff that should create job satisfaction in your job. Except I don't have some dick who can't tell his arse from his elbow coming along and setting impossible deadlines, slashing the budget, micro-managing me and my team, and generally fucking things up to the point where the only sense of achievement is a day where you made things less bad.
I work with one other person, and we have chosen to work together. The people are there because they want to be. I get to recruit who I want. And I've been able to prove to myself that my ideas about managing people - happy people are productive, people do their best when encouraged and given opportunities, teams are stonger than the individual, and all that other happy-happy crap, are all true. Sure, some days are shit, people give you grief and don't appreciate you, but hey, that happens everywhere in life.
But yeah, WoW is escapism - it's an escape from a broken world where money is everything, into another world where all that stuff you were taught as a kid about how being a decent human being leads to happiness actually applies.
Verbing nouns has been with us forever, and has been done by Shakespeare himself. Just because this results in ugliness as well as beauty doesn't mean it's wrong.
Actually, the "well-known" claim that there is a CCTV camera for every 14 people in the UK, used by the media to put the fear of an omnipotent God into folks, (and believe me, there is plenty of outrage to be found if you read the "right" papers *cough*Daily Mail*cough*) is based on some very dodgy estimates, gathered by researchers from two streets in Putney:
There may or may not be a lot of cameras. No official figures exist to say how many. However, there is good reason to believe that the usual figure quoted in not the correct one, either way.
I do not think that 'unique' means what you think it does. It does not mean 'unusual' or 'rare'.
'Unique' means that only one exists (within a specified context). So, a Christian God is unique. Your name is not, as you say that there is someone else with your name.
So the phrase 'reasonably unique' is incorrect in any context; a thing is either unique or it is not. Please also avoid phrases such as 'totally unique', 'almost unique', 'quite unique', etc.
This post had been brought to you by the UK Grammar Police. Stay aware, kids!
I had a PowerBook, and four of the keys stopped working. I'm not a hardware kind of guy, but I figured that it must be the keyboard, right? Now, I'm in the UK, and you can't buy Apple parts here, so I sent off to the USA for a keyboard. I put it in, and for about a minute the keys work - and then they don't again. I'm kicking myself for my naivety in thinking I could fix it myself, and I'm £80 down.
So I decide to take it to the professionals, and go to an Apple shop in Cheltenham (a franchise, not a/real/ Apple place, unfortunately). I have to wait nearly an hour after the advertised opening time for them to appear. I tell them that I replaced they keyboard already, that it looked like it was going to work and then stopped. I tell them that it's out of warranty, and yes I know that I'll have to give them £70 just to turn it on.
Three days later I get a call from the engineer, who tells me it's out of warranty. Yes, I know, I say. By now I've noticed that the shop droid did not write down all that I told him about my attempted repair (hell, he didn't even get my name right), so I repeat this to the engineer (who was most snotty about my getting my own part myself).
A week later I get a call saying that they swapped the keyboard out and it worked on a different machine, and that they put a new keyboard on my machine and it worked, and that they put my keyboard back on my machine and it worked. Thinking that this was unlikely but not impossible, I asked him to confirm that he had left it running for a minute. He said that he would leave it off to cool down and try again for me. Well, no I said, I think it needs to be left/on/ for a bit; perhaps the heat is affecting it. Sure says the guy, I'll leave it to cool and try again, no worries. Feeling that this conversation had gone as far as it could, I let it go. He phoned an our later to tell me that it still worked. With heavy heart that weekend, I went to pick it up. The guy in the shop did not show me it working, and when I went for coffee and tried to check it, there was no charge in the battery. So I get it home, turned it on, and after a minute... you see where I'm going with this, right?
Well, the only good thing that came out of this was that he mentioned that he had not tried the 'topcase'. So I do a bit of investigation, and see that there is a ribbon cable from the keyboard to the topcase, and then another from the topcase to the logic board. If the logic board needs replacing, I may as well buy a new PowerBook (or whatever they are called now). But if it's the topcase, it is economically viable to fix it.
So I have a few tight-lipped conversations with the 'Apple' shop and get my £70 quid back. I go onto eBay, and someone is selling a topcase for my model, which I get for £40. If it works, I have a fixed laptop; if not, I have diagnosed as much as I need for less than the 'professionals' were charging. And the news is all good - it works, and I have done what the pro's could not.
Frankly, I don't know whether to feel self-satisfied or cross.
And by the way, this story was brought to you by Western Computers, in Cheltenham and Bristol. Avoid.
I was born with awful communication skills, and found this sort of thing very difficult. After I was diagnosed with ADD, I read a lot of material about communication and related skills and learned some soft skills, and it was very useful (as well as very interesting in a geeky kind of way - if you think computers can be interesting, the way people work will blow your mind...).
Everyone should learn how to communicate with people. Essentially, this means understanding different viewpoints, which means being able to understand how people are different. There are different communication styles even between people who are ostensibly similar, which can get in the way of clear communication. I find it very frustrating that techies cannot seem to abandon the idea that there is true and false and nothing else, from which logically follows that if you don't agree with me you are wrong. Of course, in most day-to-day situations things are way more complicated than that. Is it a fact that it is rude to ignore me for two minutes when I approach your desk to talk to you? Yes, of course, I have feelings and a hello costs nothing. No, of course not, I am only dumping the contents of my brain into my IDE so I can give you my full, undivided attention.
Understanding people's reasons for their actions and reactions, and seeing through their eyes, enables you to persuade people to do the right thing, which is good for both your employer and for you. It is not being Macheavellian, or turning into a sales weasel (as long as it is used for good:-)). It also works wonders on your personal relationships.
I would recommend Getting To Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury, about win-win negociation; I'm OK, You're OK by Thomas A. Harris, Games People Play by Eric Berne, and TA Today by Ian Stewart and Vann Joines, about Transactional Analysis; and the works of Deborah Tannen, especially Talking From 9 to 5. Look into the Myers-Briggs Type Indicators too. I would also recommend asking your company to send you on a course or two about communicating assertively and negociation skills.
You have not said whether you are not a Senior because you have chosen not to be.
If you have chosen it, make that clear to your management, at interviews, etc. Just say that you enjoy the technical work, but don't want the responsibility of a Senior position. Unlike many careers, that is believeable, because in our field it is not an uncommon choice. As I team leader, I value having a few people who are just going to get the job done, and do it well. You won't be able to call for the big bucks, but I can't see why you shouldn't always be able to eat.
If, however, it isn't a choice, and you want to get on, then tell your line manager so, and ask for help in doing it. It is part of his or her job to help you progress.
Why do I have to be treated "with extra decency and respect"? What exactly is the difference you perceive, between all the men in the world and all the women in the world, that makes the amount of decency and respect you need to apply different?
I got a Speccy in my early teens. My mother, in her forties and not at all technical, acted the martyr, saying it was for the rest of the family and that she would get no benefit. She then spent hours playing Hungry Horace, and wouldn't let anyone else have a go.
Being an F1 fan, she also got "us" a racing game. She thought she was playing pretty well on her first go out of the box - until we pointed to the corner of the screen, which indicated that she was in Demo mode.
I learned Smalltalk in acadaemia, and I am now a professional Java developer. I am very grateful that I was able to learn OO via a pure language. I deal with Java developers every day, who either learned Java first or worked in a procedural language previously, and all they do is write procedural Java. By all means, teach C, Assembly or some other close-to-the-bone language to teach the fundimentals of computers (I learned Pascal and C before learning Smalltalk), but don't let them get paid for coding until they have programmed in a pure OO language.
I have to agree strongly with this - I did the OU Smalltalk (phrogs) course, and it was the finest introduction to OO I could have had. I changed careers from being a civil servant to being a Java programmer, and I knew more than most company-trained people.
Slashdot Mirror
Trust me, go. Don't fret about lost years, that's an illusion. Everyone has periods in their lives when the road ahead takes a hairpin bend; it's not a mistake, it's part of moving ahead. You've learned something. Now move on.
No, as it has not been tested it has not yet gained the status of "theory". At best it is an hypothesis, although that is probably not applicable if there is not a way of testing it.
Hypothesis + supporting experimental results = theory.
Until its proponents come up with a convincing way of testing its predictions, 'religion' probably covers it.
Actually, l33t would in certain circumstances be a better move if you are playing a defensive game - it's much harder for someone else to make another word connecting to it as there are no other words currently that include a 3.
My partner went onto the lego website, designed me some lego roses, and gave me the kit on Valentine's Day. I got to play with the lego!
Now there's a guy who knows how to romance a geek.
"I get enough of that shit at work."
This quote made me smile. I run a raiding guid, not super hardcore but we're on heroic 25-man content.
And what I like about it is it is just like work SHOULD be. I get to organize stuff for 50 people, motivate them, keep them happy while maintaining discipline, work with the team to achieve things... all the stuff that should create job satisfaction in your job. Except I don't have some dick who can't tell his arse from his elbow coming along and setting impossible deadlines, slashing the budget, micro-managing me and my team, and generally fucking things up to the point where the only sense of achievement is a day where you made things less bad.
I work with one other person, and we have chosen to work together. The people are there because they want to be. I get to recruit who I want. And I've been able to prove to myself that my ideas about managing people - happy people are productive, people do their best when encouraged and given opportunities, teams are stonger than the individual, and all that other happy-happy crap, are all true. Sure, some days are shit, people give you grief and don't appreciate you, but hey, that happens everywhere in life.
But yeah, WoW is escapism - it's an escape from a broken world where money is everything, into another world where all that stuff you were taught as a kid about how being a decent human being leads to happiness actually applies.
Verbing nouns has been with us forever, and has been done by Shakespeare himself. Just because this results in ugliness as well as beauty doesn't mean it's wrong.
Language evolves. Deal with it.
Actually, the "well-known" claim that there is a CCTV camera for every 14 people in the UK, used by the media to put the fear of an omnipotent God into folks, (and believe me, there is plenty of outrage to be found if you read the "right" papers *cough*Daily Mail*cough*) is based on some very dodgy estimates, gathered by researchers from two streets in Putney:
Channel 4 Factcheck
There may or may not be a lot of cameras. No official figures exist to say how many. However, there is good reason to believe that the usual figure quoted in not the correct one, either way.
Hey, I have ADD and I LIKE puzzles!
Er - I think you'll find that most women do 2 - 6 hours of housework AS WELL AS a job.
I do not think that 'unique' means what you think it does. It does not mean 'unusual' or 'rare'.
'Unique' means that only one exists (within a specified context). So, a Christian God is unique. Your name is not, as you say that there is someone else with your name.
So the phrase 'reasonably unique' is incorrect in any context; a thing is either unique or it is not. Please also avoid phrases such as 'totally unique', 'almost unique', 'quite unique', etc.
This post had been brought to you by the UK Grammar Police. Stay aware, kids!
I had a PowerBook, and four of the keys stopped working. I'm not a hardware kind of guy, but I figured that it must be the keyboard, right? Now, I'm in the UK, and you can't buy Apple parts here, so I sent off to the USA for a keyboard. I put it in, and for about a minute the keys work - and then they don't again. I'm kicking myself for my naivety in thinking I could fix it myself, and I'm £80 down.
/real/ Apple place, unfortunately). I have to wait nearly an hour after the advertised opening time for them to appear. I tell them that I replaced they keyboard already, that it looked like it was going to work and then stopped. I tell them that it's out of warranty, and yes I know that I'll have to give them £70 just to turn it on.
/on/ for a bit; perhaps the heat is affecting it. Sure says the guy, I'll leave it to cool and try again, no worries. Feeling that this conversation had gone as far as it could, I let it go. He phoned an our later to tell me that it still worked. With heavy heart that weekend, I went to pick it up. The guy in the shop did not show me it working, and when I went for coffee and tried to check it, there was no charge in the battery. So I get it home, turned it on, and after a minute... you see where I'm going with this, right?
So I decide to take it to the professionals, and go to an Apple shop in Cheltenham (a franchise, not a
Three days later I get a call from the engineer, who tells me it's out of warranty. Yes, I know, I say. By now I've noticed that the shop droid did not write down all that I told him about my attempted repair (hell, he didn't even get my name right), so I repeat this to the engineer (who was most snotty about my getting my own part myself).
A week later I get a call saying that they swapped the keyboard out and it worked on a different machine, and that they put a new keyboard on my machine and it worked, and that they put my keyboard back on my machine and it worked. Thinking that this was unlikely but not impossible, I asked him to confirm that he had left it running for a minute. He said that he would leave it off to cool down and try again for me. Well, no I said, I think it needs to be left
Well, the only good thing that came out of this was that he mentioned that he had not tried the 'topcase'. So I do a bit of investigation, and see that there is a ribbon cable from the keyboard to the topcase, and then another from the topcase to the logic board. If the logic board needs replacing, I may as well buy a new PowerBook (or whatever they are called now). But if it's the topcase, it is economically viable to fix it.
So I have a few tight-lipped conversations with the 'Apple' shop and get my £70 quid back. I go onto eBay, and someone is selling a topcase for my model, which I get for £40. If it works, I have a fixed laptop; if not, I have diagnosed as much as I need for less than the 'professionals' were charging. And the news is all good - it works, and I have done what the pro's could not.
Frankly, I don't know whether to feel self-satisfied or cross.
And by the way, this story was brought to you by Western Computers, in Cheltenham and Bristol. Avoid.
Can I suggest sheet music and a piano?
I was born with awful communication skills, and found this sort of thing very difficult. After I was diagnosed with ADD, I read a lot of material about communication and related skills and learned some soft skills, and it was very useful (as well as very interesting in a geeky kind of way - if you think computers can be interesting, the way people work will blow your mind...).
:-)). It also works wonders on your personal relationships.
Everyone should learn how to communicate with people. Essentially, this means understanding different viewpoints, which means being able to understand how people are different. There are different communication styles even between people who are ostensibly similar, which can get in the way of clear communication. I find it very frustrating that techies cannot seem to abandon the idea that there is true and false and nothing else, from which logically follows that if you don't agree with me you are wrong. Of course, in most day-to-day situations things are way more complicated than that. Is it a fact that it is rude to ignore me for two minutes when I approach your desk to talk to you? Yes, of course, I have feelings and a hello costs nothing. No, of course not, I am only dumping the contents of my brain into my IDE so I can give you my full, undivided attention.
Understanding people's reasons for their actions and reactions, and seeing through their eyes, enables you to persuade people to do the right thing, which is good for both your employer and for you. It is not being Macheavellian, or turning into a sales weasel (as long as it is used for good
I would recommend Getting To Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury, about win-win negociation; I'm OK, You're OK by Thomas A. Harris, Games People Play by Eric Berne, and TA Today by Ian Stewart and Vann Joines, about Transactional Analysis; and the works of Deborah Tannen, especially Talking From 9 to 5. Look into the Myers-Briggs Type Indicators too. I would also recommend asking your company to send you on a course or two about communicating assertively and negociation skills.
...when winning an Oscar just isn't enough.
You have not said whether you are not a Senior because you have chosen not to be.
If you have chosen it, make that clear to your management, at interviews, etc. Just say that you enjoy the technical work, but don't want the responsibility of a Senior position. Unlike many careers, that is believeable, because in our field it is not an uncommon choice. As I team leader, I value having a few people who are just going to get the job done, and do it well. You won't be able to call for the big bucks, but I can't see why you shouldn't always be able to eat.
If, however, it isn't a choice, and you want to get on, then tell your line manager so, and ask for help in doing it. It is part of his or her job to help you progress.
I reccommend Zen and the Art... too - the best explanation of why people screw up DIY projects ever (amongst an awful lot of other stuff).
I've read it every couple of years since I was about 20 (I'm 37 now) and it changes with your own experience. My favorite book.
Man, you have way too much time on your hands...
Okay, I'll bite...
Why do I have to be treated "with extra decency and respect"? What exactly is the difference you perceive, between all the men in the world and all the women in the world, that makes the amount of decency and respect you need to apply different?
I got a Speccy in my early teens. My mother, in her forties and not at all technical, acted the martyr, saying it was for the rest of the family and that she would get no benefit. She then spent hours playing Hungry Horace, and wouldn't let anyone else have a go.
Being an F1 fan, she also got "us" a racing game. She thought she was playing pretty well on her first go out of the box - until we pointed to the corner of the screen, which indicated that she was in Demo mode.
We never let her live that one down...
I learned Smalltalk in acadaemia, and I am now a professional Java developer. I am very grateful that I was able to learn OO via a pure language. I deal with Java developers every day, who either learned Java first or worked in a procedural language previously, and all they do is write procedural Java. By all means, teach C, Assembly or some other close-to-the-bone language to teach the fundimentals of computers (I learned Pascal and C before learning Smalltalk), but don't let them get paid for coding until they have programmed in a pure OO language.
I have to agree strongly with this - I did the OU Smalltalk (phrogs) course, and it was the finest introduction to OO I could have had. I changed careers from being a civil servant to being a Java programmer, and I knew more than most company-trained people.